Hello, please advise if you can.

My question is a basic as it gets: Where do the files and folders go in windows 7 for this plugin/tool. I have managed to get the menu items and also the toolbar into Sketchup 8 but doubt its necessarily all correct. I saw somewhere that Sketchup 8 can take Plugins into any of several folders and though this might be true, because there is quite a hirachy of files/folders in the zip and no comment about several files/folders needing a home in any posts I've seen, I'm not convinced that I have it correct.

I should say that I am using both 'Involute Gears' from ohyeahcad.com and Sketchup for the first time and that I'm posting because I can't get any real gcode, just a superficial gcode outline when I run this plugin. If anyone knows where to best put the files and folders and/or how to tweak the gear created by Involute Gears etc. I'd be grateful to hear.

Thanks a lot.

 

To Install:
Unzip contents into your Crogram FilesGoogleGoogle SketchUp 7

is where I put it, works fine, most plugins will go in the sketchup/plugin folder

if your still having problems upload the skp file so someone can look at and see whats going on

 

2Tricky, if you use Windows 7 you put the unzipped files here: Crogram Files (x86)GoogleGoogle SketchUp 8Tools. Leave the 'Phaltboyz' directory as it is and copy it in that location. The 'Phaltboyztools.rb' goes by itself into the tools directory.

 

Thanks Fred Pena and TigerPilot.

Now that I'm up and running I'm wondering whether you can give me some other basic advice, namely, is there a short cut for selecting inner or outer cuts? I ask because these gears have numerous small cuts/edges that for me anyway (with my familarity of Sketchup) are difficult to select one by one by virtue of half of the cuts not being visible from 'my' angle and not least because there might be say 10+ per tooth and that I have maybe 100 teeth.

The good news is that I have seen my first gcode teeth and given that I only selected three I think it's fair to say I'm teething!

Cheers again

 

rcav8r I've checked the help but not found much to help with my specific issues. Sometimes the Gear tool creates ugly looking teeth with short segments that make the teeth look as though they've been made from over lapping matchsticks, and at other times (with smaller gears mainly - 9 teeth for instance) most segments are arcs and join nicely. While I'm at it, I've noticed that the tool that sets the parameters always sets the safe area in decimal inches while the other fields are metric - I work in metric mainly.

Anyway, I looked into creating faces and from what I can tell extruding the gear goes a long way to making the gear acceptable. For what it's worth, I've attached a simple file as Fred Pena suggested in the hope that it'll make things clearer and I'd be grateful for anyone to take a look given your experiences - I know the two gears have different Sketchup states. Is there much chance that version 8 has something to do with the varying outcomes - I believe the tool is a few years old now...should I try to downgrade to V7 of Sketchup perhaps?

Thanks again. Attached files Gear_96z_9z.skp (88.7 KB)Â

 

2Tricky, I looked at the sample that you have posted and here are my comments.

Before you attempt to make the cut-lines you have to specify the bit diameter in the parameter box, the first icon in the SketchUCam tool menu. While you're at it specify also the material thickness and the safe area and all the other parameter, like speeds, to fit your machine.

To make an inside cut you have to have a face for the part. Your main gear does not have a face for the center. Once you have a face you can make the inside cut and when the machine cuts the part you'll have the ring that you want.

While it will work the way you draw it, I prefer not to center my drawing on the x0 and y0. I make all my drawings in the top right field, which is the 'all axis positive' field since that is where I'm cutting on my machine. What I do is place the safe area in the zero position and then place my parts in the safe area to fit my needs.

BTW, I have both SU 7 and SU 8. For my drawings I use only SU 7. I have SU 8 so that I can look at files that people post in SU 8, just like the one that you posted. If I need to work on that file, I convert it to SU 7, which can be done in SU 8 by choosing 'Save As' and clicking on the 'SU 7' option.

 

TigerPilot as it happens the file I sent was created just to send to the forum. Many of my attempts were after specifying the tool OD to no avail. I too now have V7 and the safe-area is now more reliable I think. Before it wasn't very convincing. I seem to have conquered the inside cut to an extent and can always reprogram on the mill, adding the external ring. I'm still very puzzled by the only occasional appearance of arcs in the resulting code whereas most of the time the cuts, inside or out, are just straight line segments. For my machine, with its limited memory, arcs are very welcome because when testing a 72z design, it runs out of memory, essentially crashing. Do you know anything about this issue - perhaps it is a problem with the gear utility. I thought it might have been a resolution thing but I'm not convinced. My gears have a tooth pitch of 1/8". I think I'm getting there but this arc thing is a mystery.

Thanks a lot.

 

Are u using the phlatten tool? It takes the nice arcs and turns them into little segments.

If u make a circle on a face, apply the inside/outside tool then generate Gcode, it comes out an arc, a green colored line. If u use the platen tool at any point it will break up the arc into the little segments.

Are u using Gasmashers Gcode plugin? makes it very easy to check the gcode before cutting-

Get it here- http://www.phlatforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=185&t=1128

Here is a vid tutorial from kyyu, might help-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9f-bC3hpHQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-ZmRI8YRZ8 [/url]

There is also a plugin called Weld, which takes small lines and welds them into bigger ones, may help with your mem problem-

Get it here-http://www.smustard.com/script/Weld

 

Fred Pena I was beginning to think that any arcs I had seen in gcode were not from the teeth but from some other facet such as the outer edge of my 'inside out' gear. I already use Cncsimulator (the freebie beta) to test and visualise gcode but it is a little limited - I'll check out your Gasmashers plugin suggestion and take a look at your other links.

In the mean time I tried cutting wax and all those segments don't look half bad - but I've had to make my teeth bigger (1/4" pitch) to overcome the 500 lines of gcode limit on the mill (oh those segments!).

I know of a gcode utility specifically for PCB milling that produces arcs from Gerber or PDFs (can't remember which) and maybe I'll see if I can get something into that for what its worth.

Thanks for the advice Fred...

 

2Tricky, SketchUCam treats all arcs as segments. If it's an arc that was not tempered with, the segments will be assigned a radius otherwise it will be considered a strait line. The only way to reduce the number of g-code lines is to make, for example, a circle with the circle tool and specify 3 segments. It will look wrong, of course, but it will be cut as a circle. If normally the circle would have 24 lines in the g-code now it will have only 3. I don't know if it is a shortcoming in SU or in SketchUCam.